Sorry, there’s another piece there that really irritated me. Maher reads the data selectively: he quotes the CDC’s list of possible contaminants of vaccines, like aluminum, insect repellant, formaldehyde, etc. But that is simple honesty in advertising! Everything you put in your body contains at least some trace amounts of environmental contaminants; if you freak out over the fact that insects have crawled over the organic and chemical components of food and drug manufacture, don’t look at the FDA description of what you might find in a jar of peanut butter. And especially don’t look at the crap that you’ll find in the unregulated herbal and organic nutritional supplements that Maher probably considers just wonderful.

So Maher just looks at a tiny piece of the detailed information that the CDC presents about the vaccine. He must think they’re some kind of sophisticated authority on this matter, or why doesn’t he simply dismiss everything that the CDC says because they’re pawns of Big Pharma?

Here’s a suggestion. Read the CDC’s recommendations and explanations of the swine flu and its vaccine. Read the whole thing. That’s where you’ll find the settled medical science, with overall results and recommendations, and reasonable discussions of the reservations. Maher is not an informed source at all. He’s bought into quackery and is searching for rationalizations.

Orac is breathing fire over this, as expected. He points out that Maher’s litany of ingredients isn’t just from the CDC’s list, but also comes from another site: that lunatic radio personality, Jeff Rense.